Make a shaving horse from recycled wood!

While traditionally a shaving horse would be made from green wood gathered from a forest or wood somewhere, not all of us city dwellers have easy access to the right kind and size of trees for this purpose. However, we do have access to wonderful seasoned timbers from all around the world which arrive in our cities in the form of packing crates, dunnage, and pallets. What a resource to work with!



Packing for the picking. Off the verge and into the back of the ute. Nice pine from the USA.

Earlier this year, I was needing to make up a few shaving horses for running workshops. So I started out by using some of the packing crate material I had collected which was in my timber racks.

Two models: the English Bodger style and the fabricated Dumb Head style.

There are many variations on shaving horses, though the most common styles would be the "Dumb Head" style, which has been around since at least the 14th century,  and the English Bodger's style which is a more recent (18th century) type of shave horse.

Making the Dumb-Head Style of Shaving Horse.
While I was in the USA last year, I used a fabricated dumb-head version while at the wonderful Roy Underhill's Woodwright's School. It was pretty much the same as this old plan by the legendary Drew Langsner, of Country Workshops, where I also spent some time while in the US. A big stick of timber I had would lend itself to making some of these.

While I found this kicking around on the internet, thanks anyway to Drew Langsner for the plan!

There was a nice long stick of timber in my possession, of some kind of Northern Hemispherical softwood, with Belgium stamped on it's IPSM 15 Mark. I had 6 of these sticks originally, which had come into Australia as dividers creating two layers of goods inside a sea container from Europe. Each was 7"x3" in section, 5.2m long. Yum. One of these would give me three 1.6m bodies for this style of shaving horse. Shown below after being docked up.




One long stick (5.2m) of some Northern Hemispherical softwood, here cut up to give me 3 shave horse bodies.

This "dumb-head", attached to the lever leg via a removable wedge, made from WA Blackbutt (Eucalyptus patens).

This version of a shaving horse I made to be collapsible. This would make them easier to store and easier to cart around. The four legs on each horse would be removeable as would be the lever leg. Hence the use of a wedge to hold the head onto the lever leg. Remove the wedge, slip off the head, take our the pivot bolt, and remove the lever leg. Piece of cake.  

Once part of a New Zealand manufactured bed. Now the lever leg of a recycled wood shaving horse.

It's great when a piece of recycled timber clearly tells something of its former life. I had pulled apart a bed someone had chucked out on a verge clean-up. Looking like interesting timber, I had picked it up and brougth it home for recycling. It happenned to bear a stamp from its manufacturer - made in Christchurch NZ in 1979. Love that 5 digit phone number! This bed was born the same year as my first child. This stamp is clearly visible now on the lever leg of a shaving horse.

My dear old Dad driving legs into the underside of a shave horse. Doug just turned 85. 

    The tops of the legs are tapered, to suit the tapered mortices in the body of the horse. While this helps to ensure they are removeable, I have found since that every now and then a leg drops out when you pick it up to move it. A small trade-off for portability, I guess. The tap of a mallet houses the leg, and the sideways whack of a mallet dislodges the leg. 

Completed dumb-head shave horse, with extended foot plate on lever leg.

 These shave horses work really well. Portable too. ...Fantastic.

This pics shows a lever leg without the extended foot plate.

The legs were made from some 30mm square blanks I have had for many years - originally for making Campaign Chair rails. Mostly sheoak (Casuarina sp.) and some WA Peppermint (Agonis flexuosa). Recycling old stock from my timber shorts rack - well they had only waited 20 years to be re-purposed! One day I will replace them with heavier looking legs - only because they will look better. The rest of the horses are made from packing crates, recycled furniture, and off-cuts from my joinery business.

This one has a nice chunk of jarrah for the head. Beautiful.

Thus far I have made 4 of these dumb head style horses. While the bodies are the same, each one has a slightly different lever leg, head and wedge. It all comes down to the variations in the bits of timber I pulled together to make the components up.

The perfect place to be using a drawknife... 

For the Green Woodworking Workshops I'll be running, I need to end up with about 12 shaving horses. I hope to have half a dozen of each of the two models of shaving horses. This way the workshop participants can expereince for themselves the pros and cons of each of the horse breeds.  

Making the English Bodgers' Style of Shaving Horse.
I had used one to these horses at Roy Underhill's last year, in North Carolina. A search on the net found the following plan from another legendary American Green Woodworker, Peter Follansbee.


Peter's plan was used to roughly base my bodgers' horse on.

It all starts with the right piece of wood, right? From outside a glaziers' warehouse, I had picked up a few boxes which had been used to import sheets of plate glass. From these boxes I had extracted some nice wide pieces of pine. Perfect for this type of shaving horse. It had been just waiting for the right opportunity to come along.

Such beautiful clear branding. This would have to be a feature! 

This timber was heat treated in the Arab Emirates, going by the ISPM 15 Mark so clearly branded on the packing crate. No idea where this pine grew, as it must have been imported into the Emirates in the first place. I wanted to ensure this branding would be clearly visible on the shave horses somewhere - a delightful testament to the fact that this timber had a previous life from packing crates.

Other pieces of packing crates used to make up the treadle frame. 

Unfortunately, I don't have many pics from the making of these horses.

View from the saddle. Nice blaze on this horse's nose! - the branding.

 The ramp is attached to the bed by steel hinges, mostly salvaged from old doors. The rise and fall of the ramp is altered by the block underneath, which is removeable for transport and can be slid forwards and backwards - thus changing the angle of the ramp and therefore the spacing between the horizontal of the treadle frame ramp. A nice action.  

These are a delightful horse to use. I have made three of them so far.

So there we have it... Two different horse styles, two different personalities.
I confess my favourite is the English Bodger's style. However, in retrospect I reckon these could have been made about a foot longer. You only notice this when working on longer pieces of wood, where you find your bum perches on the end of the seat. No problems, I still need to make more to reach my total of 12 horses.

Four of the shaving horses, two different models. All from recycled wood.

While it might be more romantic and 'true to form' to make a shaving horse from green wood, the eco-woodworker in me is delighted to be using wood predominantly rescued from the waste stream.

It is very easy to make a shaving horse from recycled wood. This wonderful tool, the shaving horse, has been used by chair bodgers, coopers, wheelwrights, wood carvers, spoon makers, basket makers, and so many other woodcraft workers - for centuries. By using wood rescued from the waste stream, and giving that wood a whole new life (Rather than just burning it or burying it in land fill) , I believe we bring honour to those trees from which the wood had originally come.

Soon I will make some more shaving horses... I can feel it coming on. It will be interesting to see what new breed emerges from this process. Stay tuned for a future post...

The first "Introduction to Green Woodworking" Workshop!

What a delight! On Sunday Feb 9th I ran the first "Intro to Green Woodworking" Workshop at Earthwise in Subiaco. Fantastic. My trip to the USA last year was all about this - to increase my skills and experience in this exciting area so that I could then better share the joys of green woodworking with others here in Western Australia. This workshop, the first of many I hope, was the result of 3 years of dreaming, reading, learning, upskilling and preparation. A truly joyous day!

Carving spoons from green wood is a wonderfully relaxing activity.

We spent the day under the big mulberry tree at Earthwise. A very nice and appropriate location.

Why no green wood tradition here in Australia?
In North America and Europe, there is a long tradition in green woodworking going back many centuries. However here in Australia there appears to be very little tradition in green woodwork in our European history. Here in the early days of the Western Australian colony, roofing shingles were hewn from sheoak and jarrah trees, and railway sleepers were hewn from jarrah trees... Was it the hardness of the native timbers? Was it the fact that the first European colonists arrived as the industrial revolution was in full swing in Britain? Was it the lack of a peasantry on the land? Was it the lack of long cold winters? I'd like to understand the dynamic behind the apparent lack of green woodworking tradition and history here in Western Australia. Maybe some readers out there may be able to shed some light on this matter for me...

Damon uses a hewing hatchet to clean up his gnarly piece of timber.

Shaving horses.
In the preparation for this workshop, I had made 6 shaving horses. Three of these were in the English Bodger style, and three in the traditional "Dumbhead" style. These were all fabricated from dry wood, not green wood, as I was using up timber I had in my stocks and with limited time for the task. It was predominantly recycled packing crate pine from the Northern Hemisphere which was used, plus a few sticks pulled from my timber racks. For example, the legs were taken from a pile of Campaign Chair rail blanks that I have had set aside for about 20 years! Mostly Sheoak but some WA Peppermint as well.

The English Bodger model shavehorse. 

The legs on all the shavehorses have tapered tenons on the end which go into tapered holes. A tap with the mallet locks them in, and a tap with the mallet the other way knocks the legs out to aid storage when not in use. Six shave horses can take up a lot of space!

The Fabricated Dumb-Head model shavehorse.

Parked under the big mulberry tree, using a shavehorse was very relaxing...

Surena carefully shapes her Macadamia spoon handle with a drawknife.

The shave horse has great holding power. Sam shapes his spoon handle.

Obtaining the timber for the workshop.
In preparation for the workshop, I had been collecting an array of timber pieces for a couple of months. Lots of this would be experimental, as I am keen to find which are the best timbers to use which are freely available from parks and gardens here in Perth - especially from residential gardens. I had gathered up spoon sized pieces of wood including: Macadamia, Japanese Pepper, WA Peppermint, Cotoneaster, and Eucalyptus Caesia.

Trees and houses are removed from blocks in house demolitions for "urban infill".
Jacaranda tree being pulled down. Huge Lillypillys behind are next... 

Then I found there was a house around the corner from me being demolished by an excavator. (Such a waste of all that dry jarrah in the building's structure, but that's another story...)  
I spoke to the excavator driver and asked if the trees on the block were to be removed as well. He responded by saying that the whole block was to be cleared. I expressed interest in wood from the trunks of the trees on the block: Jacaranda, Cape Lilac, Bauhenia, and a type of Lillypilly. The result of my request? Two ute loads of log sections from these trees - a small proportion of the timber in the huge trees. Nice that the driver was pleased that the wood was to be used! Otherwise all of the trees including the stumps end up carted away in trucks along with the demolished house and outbuildings. A couple of cartons had sealed the deal.

The first of the two ute loads of timber from the demolished trees. 

The second ute load of log sections from the demolition.

Part of the smorgasbord of timber for the workshop.

In addition , some months ago I had obtained a large section of Sheoak log from a saw mill. I had commenced breaking it down long ago, but had left the timber under a tarp on the front lawn at home all this time. It was destined to go to the workshop long before the ute loads of timber from the demolition site!

Breaking down one of the two Sheoak log sections... many months ago.

I certainly had more wood now than I needed for the workshop!

Getting started - the workshop begins!

With all the participants assembled under the big Mulberry Tree at Earthwise, I began by welcoming the bods to this first of many green woodworking workshops. A personally very exciting occasion for me, as this was the culmination of 3 years of dreaming and preparation. I showed a bunch of green wood spoons that I had made, contrasting this with seasoned wood spoons, which I had learned to make 20 years previously. Next it was a quick explanation about basic tree anatomy. Outer Bark, Inner Bark, Cambium Layer, Sapwood, Heartwood, Pith, Medullary Rays, how trees grow, how we utilise the properties of timber, etc. 

After I had demonstrated the use of a froe and beetle to split open a section of timber ready to make a spoon, I went through some basic stuff around the use of a drawer knife on a shave horse, and then we looked at safe knife use. 

Time then for the gang to choose a piece of wood and start to have a play!    

There was plenty of wood to choose from!
Jacksie hews out a spoon blank beside part of the pile.

While the wood available had potential to do so much more than spoon making, everyone worked on spoons on the day. This would partly be due to the fact that I only had spoons as demo pieces. Next workshop we will make stools or something with legs I reckon.
I look forward to offering a future workshop down the track where we will make Joynt Stools. Thanks for the inspiration Peter Follansbee! Meanwhile, we will work up to that by playing around making a growing range of other things with green wood first...

Graeme gets into using the drawer knife. Such a wonderful tool!

The Hatchet Work.
Unfortunately I didn't get any pics of the first step - the riving (splitting) the log sections apart with beetle and froe. Once the blanks have been formed in this manner, the next step is to hew the shape and remove the waste using hewing hatchets. I have a variety of hatchets, from the very fancy Gransfors Brux Carving Hatchet to some nice old broad hatchets I brought back from the USA, to garden variety hatchets which have be re-ground to create quite acceptable hewing tools. Whatever type it is, the key to a hatchet's performance is really in the bevel grinding more than the honing of the edge. Being razor sharp of course is pretty important!
The participants were encouraged to try out as many of the hatchets as they liked.

The Catoneaster proved to be the unfriendliest wood on the day - very interlocking grain!

The idea with the hatchet work is to use the tool to efficiently and accurately remove as much of the waste as possible. This applies to spoon making too.

Sue gets in the swing of the hatchet work.

The knife work.
The hatchet work looks dangerous, but it is the knife work which can most easily inflict the damage! There are a number of different knife strokes/techniques used in spoon carving. Each of these are controlled cuts, making them safe. That's the theory. However when starting on the journey, it is easy to nick yourself as you gain experience and develop the techniques! We went through a good few band-aids during the day.

Sue does a straight-armed "power cut" to remove waste with a Sloyd knife. 

Levering actions with the thumbs and fingers are safe, controlled, and effective. 

It's a very relaxing thing, carving spoons with knives!

Spot the bandaids in the dappled light of the mulberry tree. 

A good start to our Green Woodworking journey.
While no spoons were totally completed on the day (a couple were starting to be dried in the microwave ready for their final clean-up), it was a great introduction to the joys of messing about with green wood. Thanks to all the participants who took part in this experiment.

Ian contemplates the spoon he was making... 

Special thanks to Ian for bringing along some additional tools. He had a froe, draw knives, some carving knives, a fantastic Austrian bearded broad axe (very nice!) and more. His previous experience, his gear, and buckets of enthusiasm were an asset on the day! Thanks Ian.
 

We had a great day together messing about under the mulberry tree.

Keep an eye out for more green woodworking opportunities. This was just the start of a whole new direction for Joy of Wood activities. Wood recycling has always been an important part of the message - packing crates, pallets, other timber rescued from the waste stream. We use recycled wood for all of the other workshops we run. This new territory opens up the potential for the recycling of garden trees which would otherwise be chipped for mulch or would just be discarded into landfill.

It is a sad fact that too many trees are being removed from our city. Better that the timber is utilised, value added, rather than just getting tossed. The challenge now is to try out so many different trees for their properties and use potential!

I invite you to join us on this exciting journey...

Have Green Wood, will have a great time crafting stuff!

A Staircase Saga, Part 4. The Short Flight.

Some months after the Big Flight was installed, the time had come for the Short Flight to be added. Much had happened in that period, including the installation of the underfloor heating, the laying of the jarrah floor over the top, the building and defining of the new wall and the opening in the upper floor, the plastering and gyprocking of walls and ceilings, and more. With the plastering of the walls completed and now dry enough, I was looking forward to working on the stairs again.

This staircase will have two sets of winding treads, separated by a pair of normal straight treads - which I shall refer to here as the Short Flight.  Above the second set of winders will be the Big Flight. Below the first set of winders will be a couple of straight treads which will give a sense of "spilling out" into the hallway, wrapping around to meet the wall on either side of the staircase. Of course, then there's the handrail and the ballustrading upstairs! There's a way to go yet before this staircase saga is completed...

Back to the drawing board.
What a surprise! The actual measurements were checked against the original drawing, including the position of the tenon on the bottom of the Big Flight's inner stringer. This tenon would be fitted into the newel post which would be fitted around the wall in the opening of the wall.

The original full scale drawing.

Essential to the short flight is the three newel posts which are part of this component of the staircase. The drawing above shows the relationship between these posts, the wall through which the stairs pass, the two sets of winders, the big flight, and of course the short flight of two straight treads.

Making the newel posts.
The only way to get 90 x 90 mm jarrah is to recycle old verandah posts, obtained from Salvage yards.
Buried under layers of old paint, it is a lucky dip until the material is machined up.

Amazing how many nails and screws are lurking under the layers of paint on the verandah posts.

Two of the three newel posts required for this section will have a 30x30mm rebate out of them to fit around the wall snugly, through which the staircase will pass.

One part of the full scale drawing of the three newel posts and how they relate to the short stringer and the wall.

The Handrail.

A short section of handrail/balustrading will extend between the two lower newel posts. My customer found a profile she liked on a US website, so I did some experimentation to see if I could get close. I found I could get close starting with 60x60mm material, the table saw, and three different router cutters! This profile will be used for all of the handrails to be added later. I made the short section I would need for this short flight section.

The handrail profile... and how to make something close!

The balustrade panel.
Between the hand rail, the stringer and the posts either side, would be some balustrading. While discussing  the design possibilities, we hit on the idea of matching the original entry hallway woodwork adjacent to the staircase. Brilliant! I grabbed a piece of drawing paper and a ladder, and did a tracing of the original tulip panel.

The original decorative woodwork above the hallway.

Tracing the tulip panel

The tulip design was cut out and then used to draw around on the jarrah panel.

I don't use my scroll saw often, but it's great for jobs like this.

The panel was made! What a good idea. Time to put it all together.

Putting it all together.
Using the full scale drawing, all the components were cut to size and angle, the mortises chopped, the tenons cut, and every joint test fitted. Time consuming, but essential before doing a dry run cramping it all together. If it is all sweet, it will be disassembled and then glued up in situ.

All these angles are very tricky to cut and fit. I'd be lost without the full scale drawing to take measurements off.

These two posts straddle the wall. The narrow panel will hide the wall end between the posts. 

Looking good for the test fit.

With all the components and joints fitted, it was time to bite the bullet. Glue-up time, on situ.

The glue-up begins, That's the hole in the wall we are going through.

The short flight starting to take shape.

The short flight develops further.

Another view. That's the big flight up around the corner.

Another look. Yep, the tulip panel was a nice idea!

Gluing all this up was a huge job. The upper post had the big flight's tenon housed into it as well as the nose of Tread#11. It had to be fitted around the wall, and the treads and  a couple of risers put in place - as well as the balustrading/handrail, etc. All in all, I was very pleased the way it all came together.

The short flight was now in place. The next step would be to build the two sets of winding treads, which go either side of the short flight.